Teacher is a Compass

There are many things in the world that we can learn by ourselves, like cooking, gardening, making furniture and even a language but we cannot learn Wing Chun without a teacher. The teacher is a compass to guide you in the right direction and without it you will arrive at the wrong destination. Therefore you need to make sure you also choose a good compass, choose a good teacher.

Wing Chun is different to a lot of other martial arts. Many other martial arts just need you to be strong and powerful but Wing Chun is different. Wing Chun requires you to be gentle and precise, to read your opponent’s energy as well as the whole situation. At the end, you can use less energy to defeat your opponent.

A bad compass will give you the rough direction but not exactly the right point. I am sure we all have experience to ask someone directions when we are lost. If someone gives us a wrong direction, at the end we have go back the same place to start from the beginning that is very annoying. If this happens in studying Wing Chun you will have wasted a lot of time and have to start again with someone else. The wrong teacher might also give you bad habits that can damage your health. Some bad habits you can never change. I am sure you have the saying, “bad habits die hard”, and that is very true.

How can you know what is a good teacher? One easy way is to look at their students. You will be able to see from the students’ skill and behaviour what the teacher is like as the students will eventually be a lot like their teacher. A good teacher will have good students. So if you want to be good, then find a good teacher.

I find that it takes both courage and humility to sincerely “ask for directions” but when we do both student and teacher are enriched through the process.

Gradually I am learning that a truly great teacher not only shows the correct way to behave through their own actions. They also instil in their students the significance of the relationship between teacher and student. Through this transmission, they thus preserve the essence of the teaching.

Thank you for another great article. I was very fortunate to find Moy Sifu and the Tse Qigong Centre at the start of my journey, which has saved me from taking any wrong turns and having to back-track in my studies. Especially as at the start, I had no real idea of what Wing Chun was or how a good class should be. In the years since I have grown to appreciate how great a compass Moy Sifu is, and have learnt a lot about the teacher/student relationship.

Thank you for your reply and thank you for the Wing Chun notes. When Qi Magazine stopped being published quarterly I really missed it. But now with your Wing Chun notes series, London feels that little bit closer again.

Hello there.
I am a big fan of Wing Chun and would like to learn the basics of it,just to not get hurt by others.But I cannot get a teacher from religion place and economical reasons.Is it possible to learn Wing Chun without a teacher?

It is possible to learn Wing Chun without teacher for simple basic, but you might develop a lot of mistakes and bad habit. Because Wing Chun is skill to use less energy to against strong energy so you need to practice Chi Sau with a teacher who can correct and show you the proper way to do, so at the end you still need a good teacher to teach you.